Amiga's History..... 
1982 : 3 doctors from Florida had about 7 million US dollars to invest on something. After thinking
about what to invest, they decided to open a computer company. They convinced Jay Miner
(who worked at Atari at the time) and Dave Morse (who worked in Tonka Toys as vice president
of sales) to join in and assist them in building a computer. They also got Carl Sassenrath and
RJ Mical to help then on the project. They were looking for a good name for the new machine, a
friendly name, which would attract potential customers. While looking in the thesaurus, the
Amiga was the first synonym they saw, and they soon decided to call the new machine, Amiga.
7 million US dollars weren't enough for such an extensive project. The Amiga team needed some
more cash and they also needed to have other products so that the name Amiga could be
recognized. The Amiga team bought the rights for some products, and developed other, but one
of the most popular pre-Amiga products was the JoyBoard. The JoyBoard was a controller
device, like a joystick or a mouse, which you used by either sitting on it or standing on it.
Several games were designed for it, like Ski and others, but the more popular one was Zen
Meditation. In Zen Meditation, you had to sit on the JoyBoard and remain completely still. When
things got tight on the development of the Amiga, the Amiga team used Zen Meditation to relax.
They still worked on the Amiga and picked the processor for the Amiga, the Motorola 68000.
1983 : In 1983, the financial strains on the Amiga team rose, as the prices on hardware increased.
They wanted the Amiga to be a successful game machine and that really started to happened
as suggested price for the Amiga was 400$, but when to prices rose to more then 600$, the
Amiga team needed more then a game machine to survive. They started plans to design better
hardware for the Amiga, so it could be introduced as a computer, not as a game machine. The
Amiga team started designing the controllers, custom chips, keyboard, ports and disk drives.
1984 : In early 1984, Consumer Electronics Show (C.E.S) exposition took place in Chicago, USA. The
C.E.S show was one of the biggest computer shows in the world at the time, and many
companies placed the demos of their latest products in C.E.S. Commodore introduced its Plus
4 home computer, and the Amiga team showed their prototype. The Amiga team was looking for
someone to invest in them or to buy them, because the project was too expensive. They rented
a small gray room in the exhibition, and the Amiga prototype was only shown to select
customers. The Amiga prototype was only completed several hours before the show started, and
the team worked about 20 hours a day (not including sleeping, eating and drinking). When the
people came in, all they could see was a pile of logic circuits, wires and chips (no case). People
saw the display, and the presentation that the Amiga prototype ran (the famous "Boing" demo -
a bouncing ball, with red and white rectangles as its color), and kept looking under the table,
looking for a real computer (or supercomputer) that generates the presentation.
Jack Tramiel, who was the president and founder of Commodore, got into a dispute with
Commodore's main shareholder, Irving Gould. Gould made him leave Commodore after 25 years
as Commodore's president, and employed a guy named Marshal Smith instead. Smith had no
knowledge in computers and thus no knowledge in managing a computer company, and
Commodore never returned to the days when Tramiel was president, and Commodore's share in
the Personal Computer business was more then 32%. Anyway, after Tramiel left Commodore,
he purchased Atari, Commodore's main rival in the home computer business. Tramiel was
hoping to get his revenge on Commodore by building in Atari a superior computer. The Atari
development team designed the Atari ST, but Tramiel knew that the Amiga could be a much
better investment since its much better then the Atari ST. Seeing that the Amiga team was
running out of money (since the three doctors wanted out of the deal) he lent Amiga 500,000$
US, while they're negotiating. Tramiel took business very seriously (he learnt business in the far
east and was quoted more then once saying "business is war"), and when it was apparent that
Amiga wont be able to pay Atari back, he offered to buy Amiga for 0.98$ US a share. Amiga
thought it was unacceptable and every time they tried to bargain, Atari lowered their bid. Amiga
was looking for someone else to buy them, because 0.98$ US per share, isn't enough to cover 2
years and millions of dollars of development. Three days before the 500,000$ US loan deadline,
Commodore came and started negotiating. Commodore offered 4$ US per share, but Dave
Morse insisted on 4.25$ US per share, for all the employees that worked on the Amiga.
Commodore immediately gave Amiga 27 million dollars for development, and the Amiga team,
overwhelmed by the amount of money invested in them, went and bought Sun workstations for
the software developers and started working to develop the Amiga for Commodore.
1985 : In July 23rd, 1985, Commodore and Amiga introduced in Lincoln center in New York City, the
first Amiga machine, the Amiga 1000.
In September, the Amiga 1000 already shipped to its first customers.
If you want to check the technical specifications of the Amiga 1000, click the Amiga Models
button on your left side toolbar.
The operating system for the Amiga, the Amiga OS, was created by a British software house,
called Metacomco. Metacomco created programming languages for the Atari ST and the Sinclair
QL, and Commodore hired them to create a back-up operating system for the Amiga, in a matter
of weeks. Luckily for Metacomco, they already built an operating system for the Motorola
MC68000 processor, so all they had to do was to modify it for the Amiga system. This also
turned out as a complicated job, but they finished building it, and the original operating system
software maker, from Los Gatos couldn’t complete it in time.
1986 : In 1986, work commenced on a new Amiga model. The new Amiga was developed in two of
Commodore's R&D centers, one in Los Gatos (USA) and one in Braunshweig (Germany). The
Braunshweig R&D center is still in use today by Amiga Inc. Commodore also wanted the new
Amiga to have IBM compatibility, so both R&D centers started developing a software and a
hardware emulator.
1987 : In 1987, Commodore launched the Amiga 2000, the successor of the Amiga 1000. It still used a
Motorola MC68000 processor, and it was the basis for future models: A1500, A2000HD,
A2500/20, A2500/30, A2000HDA/100, A1500 plus and A2000 plus.
The Amiga 500 was introduced later in 1987. It had the Keyboard and the CPU in the same box
(like the Commodore 64, VIC 20, Commodore 128, etc), and had a new operating system, the
Amiga OS 1.2. The Amiga 500, is the most popular Amiga computer in the Amiga history.
1990 : Commodore finished developing the first fully 32-bit computer. The Amiga 3000 with the 32-bit
Motorola MC68030 processor was introduced by Commodore and started shipping. The Amiga
3000 had a new chipset, the ECS, and the new Kickstart 2.0. Commodore also introduced a
tower version, the Amiga 3000T, and a UNIX version, the Amiga 3000UX. The Amiga 3000 could
also use a VGA monitor, only by installing a flicker-fixer.
Commodore introduced later that year, the Amiga 500+. This was a European version, with the
new ECS chipset instead of the EHB chipset, more memory, and a newer operating system.
1991 : Commodore introduced the first computer system that used a CD-ROM, the CDTV in 1991. The
CDTV never became a big hit for several reasons. Although Commodore put the Amiga OS as
the operating system for the CDTV, Commodore didn’t put the Amiga logo on the CDTV case,
and so the Amiga users could not identify it as an Amiga computer. There was also a lack of
software for the CDTV. The CD versions of many games were not much better then the floppy
disk version. The CDTV was also more expensive then the Amiga 500 and so eventually,
Commodore introduced an upgrade for the CDTV that makes it an Amiga 500.
1992 : In March 1992, Commodore introduced the Amiga 600. It used the same processor that the
Amiga 500 used, and had the same keyboard-case. It also had an IDE controller rather then a
SCSI one, and a PCMCIA slot. Later in 1992, Commodore launched the Amiga 600HD, a hard
drive version.
In the September 1992 World of Commodore (W.O.C) show in Pasadena, California,
Commodore introduced a new graphics chipset.
The AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture) was able to support up to 16.7 million colors. In the
same show Commodore officially introduced the first high-end computer to use the new chipset.
The Amiga 4000 had the new Motorola MC68040 processor and other features. In the same
show, Commodore introduced the new AmigaDOS™ version 3.0 and the new development
package for the Amiga, the AmigaVision Professional.
In Christmas 1992, Commodore introduced a new low end Amiga computer, the Amiga 1200.
The Amiga 1200 used the AGA chipset, and it also had 2 MB of RAM.
1993 : In 1993, Commodore released its last machine. The new game console, the CD32, used the
Amiga OS, and was the first 32-bit game console. The CD32 was a lot like what the Sony
Playstation is today. It used a double speed CD-ROM, 2 MB of RAM and the AGA chipset. The
CD32 had an option of running games in Full Motion Video (F.M.V) mode. This feature was
pretty innovative, but Commodore didn’t receive much support for it by software and game
developers, and a very small number of games used the F.M.V option. The CD32 didn’t stop
Commodore form losing money, and Commodore was now underway for bankruptcy.
